Grandville RoboDawgs spend spring break competing, earning awards

Grandville High School's RoboDawgs Teams 216, 244, and 288 earned the Gracious Professionalism Award, the first time all three teams received the award, at the Western Canadian FIRST Robotics Competition Regional held during spring break in Calgary.Supplied

The Grandville High School RoboDawgs spent their spring break competing in the Western Canadian FIRST Robotics Competition Regional in Calgary, playing their way into the quarterfinals and, for the first time, all three teams earning the Gracious Professionalism Award.

Grandville’s Teams 216, 244, and 288 competed in the event against about 40 other teams from across North America. Coach Doug Hepfer said the teams competed well and there were a few firsts for the teams during the competition.

Hepfer said one first was all three Grandville teams were awarded the Gracious Professionalism Award at the contest.

“This award is always given to a top-performing team at each event, but in Calgary the judges broke the rules and gave this award to each of our three FRC competition teams,” he said. “This is the first time ever that an award at a FIRST competition was given to three teams.”

Hepfer added the RoboDawgs have won this award at every regional competition the teams have played at in the last year, just not all three teams at the same time.

Hepfer said another first was all three Grandville teams were randomly selected to be in an alliance during the competition.

“During the first two days of the event, the field computer randomly assigns teams to play on three team alliances,” he said. “Each team plays 12 times during the qualification rounds held on those two days, and each time they place alongside two randomly selected teams. For the first time in history, the three Grandville High School teams were assigned to play together during a qualifying round. The odds of this happening are very small – it has never happened before.

“We were very proud of our RoboDawg teams as, when put on this alliance together, the Dawgs crushed the opposing alliance by a score of 170 to 16. If we could just play together all the time, we’d have an amazing record.”

And Hepfer said Grandville High School is the only school in the world that has three FIRST Robotics teams.

“We are known across North America, and the RoboDawgs were invited back to the Western Canadian Regional FRC Competition again this year based on the overall strength of our program,” he said.

For the events, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics teams design and build competition robots. The competitions have two parts: the qualification rounds where teams play a dozen matches for their tournament rankings and a second round where each of the top teams pick two partners to play in a double-elimination playoff to determine the tournament winner.